


Oh God, This Bed, It Feels So Cold

by Sola_Ircadia



Category: Tekken
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Coping, Grief/Mourning, M/M, Mild Sexual Content, Past Relationship(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-25
Updated: 2017-09-25
Packaged: 2019-01-05 04:25:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,555
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12182856
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sola_Ircadia/pseuds/Sola_Ircadia
Summary: "It'll be fine. You trust me, right?"





	Oh God, This Bed, It Feels So Cold

**Author's Note:**

> This is so oLD GOOD GRACIOUS I completely forgot I had ever written this
> 
> I couldn't decide whether or not I wanted to post this, but since it's only about 1,500 words, I figured I would just jump the gun and go for it. Take care of yourselves, everyone!

 

_Wake up in the morning, it’s not so bad_

_I can taste you on my lips and it makes me sad_

 

* * *

 

It’s like he’s falling again, falling from his high, falling in love, he doesn’t even know what’s up or down anymore. The air feels heavy sometimes, like trying to breathe underwater – he knows better than many just how well that doesn’t work. Things are frozen, things are hot, things don’t add up when he tries to put them together and they definitely don’t matter as much anymore. Every now and then, he’ll forget what certain words mean, what the sounds imply when they’re strung together with the proper syllabic stresses and well-timed pauses.

 

_“Che, Kazama. You’re thinking too hard again.”_

 

Jin wakes up gasping, arms outstretched and reaching for nothing. _Not anymore._ His throat is dry, his chest burns, and his eyes sting insistently no matter how hard he squeezes them shut, silently willing whatever is creeping up in his throat – a scream, a sob, any sound at all – to go away, go away, _just go away_.

 

After spending some time laying on his back with the heels of his hands pressed into his eyes, he summons the will – or is it courage? – to sit up in his bed, aching and exhausted beyond measure despite not having done anything out of the ordinary the day before. He feels strange, out of place, like his body isn’t attached to his mind somehow, no matter how impossible he knows it to be.

 

Swallowing hard, Jin pushes himself out of bed, a little unsteady on his feet but distantly resolute all the same. The room looks the same, it always looks the same, but something feels different to him. Is it the way that he shut the curtains last night? Is it the way that he left his books all over his desk? No, no, that’s all the same...then what is...?

 

_“I can hear those gears turning, wouldn’t you say it’s a little too early for this?”_

 

Jin freezes, shaking his head so hard that he almost falls over as dizziness threatens to overtake him. It’s too much, he doesn’t want this, doesn’t want any of this, not anymore, not when wanting this means remembering everything and remembering everything means...it means...

 

“...you didn’t have to do that.”

 

* * *

 

It’s these little things that set him off, useless things. Stupid things. Like the way one of the new kids leans against locker number five before tryouts start. The banging of the locker doors, the sound of voices in the resonance of the dojo, the distance that it seems from that wall to this wall, from the surface to the bottom, from here to the floor. If he just fell over now, collapsed in this very spot without warning or reason, what would happen? Would he somehow make it out unscathed like he always does? Would he hit his head on the ground and forget about everything? Part of him is tempted to test it out.

 

But he shakes his head, shoos the kid off locker number five with a few words and a smile, and starts tryouts like he isn’t slowly falling apart inside.

 

_“I want to do this with you.”_

 

Definitely not falling apart inside, not when he gets their attention, not when he calls the hopefuls to order, not when he takes another glance at locker number five before heading out and swears that he sees a flash of bright eyes there.

 

_“Let’s be the best they’ve ever seen, yeah?”_

 

* * *

 

Four.

 

What’s so special about four?

 

What makes it so different from five? Locker number four, locker number five, lockers and numbers and the fighting kids that use them before and after practice. It’s just one number of disparity, right? Four plus one is five, eight minus three is five, eight minus four is four...just the tiniest difference. What makes that difference? What gives four the right to be safe, but not five?

 

Four. Four is death. Not five, never five. He’s heard that before somewhere, some random bit of trivia that he’s never found ironic until now.

 

It should’ve been him.

 

_“Kazama, you don’t look so good. Are you feeling alright?”_

 

He has to move around, standing abruptly and pacing through the room, hugging himself and trying very hard not to scream again. There are these _words_ in his head, this _voice_ that keeps talking to him, this _feeling_ that keeps trying to fill the silence, but all it ever succeeds in doing is hurting him more. He doesn’t know what he needs, what he wants, what he misses.

 

Coming to a standstill in the middle of his room, his hands drop to his side with the slow-dawning realization that he doesn’t really know anything anymore.

 

* * *

 

He remembers the way that he fell to his knees, the way that his heart just gave up and broke right then, loud enough to send his thoughts scattering. Part of him wonders, albeit distantly, how many of those thoughts still haven’t come back, how many of those thoughts will hurt him when they return, and how many of those thoughts are lost forever.

 

He’d sent messages, wondered about calling, hadn’t even known that anything had happened for whole entire _days_ before he'd found out. They'd never even thought about it, had never even considered something like that as a viable possibility. Eighteen year olds don’t just _die_ , they don’t just go like that, they just _don’t_. It isn’t _fair_ , it isn’t right, it just. Isn’t. It can’t be. It’s impossible.

 

_“Never say never, buddy. Nothing is impossible.”_

 

It feels like a cruel joke to have something that was intended as encouragement creep back up on him now. It’s just more disgusting irony, more things that he doesn’t know how to handle, and it never ends, does it? Of course not.

 

_“Distance doesn’t matter, yeah? It’s not like I’m dead.”_

 

Other than that though – that, and an unexpected voice over the phone, a sad voice, the _wrong_ voice – he remembers nothing. 

 

* * *

 

_"Ssh, ssh. I’ve got you, it’s alright.” Hwoarang’s voice is deep and soothing, somewhere close to Jin’s ear in this self-inflicted darkness. They’re both panting, the dark-haired teen’s wrists are pinned to the mattress and his back arches slightly when Hwoarang shifts at his place in between his legs._

 

_“I can’t...” his voice comes out thin, higher than usual and so, so shaky it’s like he’s afraid of something. But there’s nothing to be afraid of here. Not when Hwoarang is around. “There’s so...so much.”_

 

_“I know, I know.” The redhead murmurs, stroking the undersides of Jin’s wrists with his thumbs and kissing him, the pressure hard but not too demanding. Patient, always so deceptively patient._

 

_Hwoarang waits for several more moments, nuzzling Jin’s throat and kissing him until he seems more comfortable, before moving, the careful push already more than enough to make his breath hitch. Beneath him, Jin whimpers slightly, back arching more sharply when Hwoarang moves again, his head tossing sideways._

 

_“Hwoarang,” he gasps, moaning a little when the other makes a noise deep in his throat._

 

_“You’re alright, baby,” Hwoarang manages, his voice a little ragged as he tries to catch his breath. “You’re alright.”_

 

_Somewhere in the middle of all of it, Hwoarang kisses him again, hands no longer gripping his wrists and holding him close instead. Jin has his fingers in Hwoarang’s hair, barely letting him come up for air before he brings their lips back together. He doesn’t want to forget this._

 

_He never wants to forget this._

 

* * *

 

When he wakes up this time, tears are streaming down his face and his throat burns and his chest aches more than he can stand it. He’s finally crying this time, _really_ crying, an arm over his eyes and a hand clutching his shirt just over his heart like it can alleviate the pain, and he _cries_. He let it all out, the sobs, the lower sounds of agony – when he has to scream, when he can’t hold it back anymore, he wails into his pillow, his whole body shaking with the force of it. He doesn’t think he’s ever hurt this bad before in his life, because now he remembers, he remembers _everything_.

 

_“What, you think you can take me?”_

 

_"You’re the only one worth fighting.”_

 

_“You know you matter to me, right?”_

 

_“This is how I want to remember it. You. Me. Side by side, undefeated equals, right where we belong. Together.”_

 

_“It’ll be fine. You trust me, right?”_

 

Jin grips his shirt with both hands now, laying on his side and heaving deep, shuddering breaths. He doesn’t want to think anymore, doesn’t want to remember any of this, he just wants to forget, why did this have to happen? He’s in so much pain, lost in memories that he never wanted to lose but can no longer stand to relive. Even with this understanding, he just can’t let go, no matter what he does. He’d loved him, he knows that he did – does? – and he can’t just let that go. He has to. He can't. It’s too much.

 

It’s not enough.

 

_“Jin, I would wait for you anywhere.”_

 

“But where are you?” Jin whispers, his voice the only real sound in the room. “Where did you go?”

 

**Author's Note:**

> The song I used for inspiration is Pour Me Out by He Is We; the original file for this story actually has song lyrics interspersed throughout it, which frankly dates the darn thing better than the timestamp in my flashdrive does.


End file.
